Organizational effectiveness: evolution of training.

The quest for effectiveness is centuries old. Plato wrote about the correlation of system processes around 300 A.D. and spoke of "what we put into something" should reflect "what we get out of it." Peter Drucker, a more recent thought leader, struck upon the idea of developing knowledge workers, recognizing that only in the most recent hundred or so years have we been provided with almost limitless choices. His summation: the greater the knowledge--the greater the choices and decisions. Training became the organizational response to improvement and effectiveness.

Donald Kirkpatrick, author and academic, considered that developing knowledge could be more useful if measured within the context of application. Publishing first in 1959 and again in the late 1990s, he professed that as long as there was a systematic approach to learning, training events could be measured. The systematic approach defined the learner (for the first time) as a key success element in the process of relevant learning transfer and application of that learning within the organization.

According to research conducted by Swanson and Dobbs, the future of training (and all organizational learning) lies within systematic and systemic approaches. They say that the more training contributes to the core business, the more it is valued. Therefore, in light of lesser evidence of this combined contribution, it is more likely that training will be reduced or eliminated. Simply put, the systematic and systemic approach is about survival of the OE goal and the organizations it serves. Swanson and Dobbs rely on the systematic ADDIE learning development model (analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate) within the context of organizational requirement as married to the systemic choices of analysis and evaluation in order to build and sustain expertise.

Organizational effectiveness largely depends on the good decisions and actions of individuals within a complex system. It is the concept of how capable an organization is in achieving the results the organization intends to produce. Organizational effectiveness considers Plato's observation of "what you put in, you get out," and factors in Drucker's insistence for knowledge workers; the building of intellectual capability with decision-making expertise. It also honors measurement as achieved through systematic processes while prescribing the need for both a systemic and systematic commitment within the strategy.

So, how does training evolve? By being viewed more as a strategy than a solution. Performance may rely less on participants' satisfaction and more on the relevance of the learning as applied within practice; the readiness and capability of the worker to do the job right, to make the right decisions; the right choices. This view suggests that the worker aligned with organizational strategy can continually improve by adapting to the changes and requirements of the job; that practice applied over time imbeds knowledge and also permits necessary failures and expected successes. Learning by doing approaches allow correct decisions to be extracted through practical application.

As organizations speed up in complexity and expectation, capacity building provides the lynch pin by which training extracts its relevancy. Capacity building begins with the clear definition of organizational goals and strategy as it affects the rapidly changing layers of an organization. Rising up from operations and trickling down from strategy, key processes, structure and culture frame the functional model while reinforcing and aligning the goals of the organization and the continued performance or actions of its workers.

Peter Vaill is one of the nation's most influential organizational change theorists. The university professor of management at Antioch may be best known for his book, "Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water." He reflects that individual and organizational survival depends on taking a consistent temperature of how things are done and how they may need to change; we are back to those choices again.

Authors and Stanford Professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton agree that it is not about what you know, but what you are doing with what you know. In their publication, "The Knowing-Doing Gap," they address such things as hollow talk, poorly designed, yet complex, systems and relying on "doing it like we have always done it," insisting that the best of intentions do not provide required results.

At the end of the day, we are left with several points to consider:

* Outcomes are reflected by input occurring at all performance capacity levels: Data; trust; values; fiscal; workforce; functional; service

* Developing knowledge workers is important, however knowledge alone is not enough

* Learning measurement can occur by using systematic processes such as ADDIE within the development of training and learning opportunities, however, the systematic process alone within training is not enough to improve efficiencies

* Including systemic strategy such as learning by doing permits the individual to convert knowledge into action with the potential to imbed learning as a way of being into organizational culture.

Wendy Adams was an organizational effectiveness consultant at the American Public Human Services Association